Sunday, December 9, 2012

Fancy Footwork

This is a ZAMPONE. Not to be confused with ZAMBONI, though you could grease an ice rink with it. (Ok, I used that joke in the last cookbook, sorry.) But this is a different recipe. I wanted to see what would happen if left out all the skin inside and just used a good sausage stuffing. Lovely stiches arent they? My mutha would say you shoulda bina surgeon. Trust me, I had to use every blade in the house to bone and stich this. A carbon steel buffalo skinner to cut through the skin is essential and an exacto knife to poke holes through which you pass a trussing needle. It's definitely not sharp enough on its own. So this shapely gam will cure in the fridge for a week with salt, coriander, pepper, bay, etc. Then it will be gently poached for a few hours, then I think roasted so the skin gets crispy.There's a hefty layer of fat beneath. Betty Grable, eat your heart out.

And here it is after simmering for a few hours then popping in the oven to roast. It came out perfectly crunchy on the outside, sweet and fatty on the inside. You defintiely don't need to add more skin to the stuffing, as with a coteghino. Sliced nicely too. I brought it to a hoodie party last night and it was gobbled.

Food A Cultural Culinary History

About Me

Food Historian at the University of the Pacific. Director of Food Studies in San Francisco.
Author of Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, The Banquet, Beans (2008 IACP Jane Grigson Award) and Pancake. A cookbook with Rosanna Nafziger THE LOST ART OF REAL COOKING.
Coeditor of The Lord's Supper with Trudy Eden and Editor of A Cultural History of Food: The Renaissance.
Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia (4 vols.) Three World Cuisines: Italian, Mexican and Chinese recently won the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards Best Foreign Cuisine book in the World. The Routledge International Handbook to Food Studies is in print.
A sequel to the cookbook - entitled THE LOST ARTS OF HEARTH AND HOME.
Latest Books: Grow Food, Cook Food, Share Food from Oregon State U Press, a little book on Nuts from Reaktion and The Food History Reader from Bloomsbury. The Most Excellent Book of Cookery (translation of a 16th c. French Cookbook with Tim Tomasik) from Prospect Books. Not to mention THE BEAST: The Food Issues Encyclopedia for Sage. Still in the works.